Friday, March 29, 2013

Cunningham Aide Katie Bolger Had a Rough Night With the Cops

On March 22, Katie Bolger, Chief of Staff for Ward 2 City Councilman Paul Cunningham and one-time Green Party candidate, walked home from a night drinking. That's where it got weird.

Bolger was apparently crossing Speedway near 5th Avenue in a generally poorly lit area when a cop in an unmarked police vehicle almost struck her. For understandable reasons, the police office stopped to talk to Bolger, who then, according to the police report, went for belligerence as a strategy. A selection of quotes attributed to Bolger from the police report:

"Fuck you, motherfucker. You almost hit me.""You should be ashamed you almost hit me. That's on you!""We don't have enough money to respond to burglaries or car accidents, but we have time to respond to fucking jaywalkers.""You might want to call [police chief] Villasenor just for the fuck of it.""Protect the fucking town, you motherfucker.""This is why we should support more money for fucking cops? Good PR."

Officers offered to give Bolger a ride home, however Bolger refused the offer stating she would rather go to jail than take a ride. When Ted Prezelski came to pick Bolger up, she demanded he record the situation (grabbing his bicep and reminding him that he works for her) when she refused to sign the citation. Getting her wish, she was transported to the Pima County Jail.

Bolger declined to comment, but her boss Cunningham remarked that Bolger exercised "bad judgment" and the matter would be dealt with internally.

Cunningham almost certainly would rather not deal with this sort of issue, because inevitably it reminds people of his own alcohol-related behavior issues, most famously on a San Diego TREO junket in May of 2012.

It should be noted this information and a copy of the police report went out in an pseudonymous email last night addressed to Mayor Rothschild, but sent to nearly everyone in the Tucson media. The sender seemingly has a grudge against Cunningham's office (the email referred to Prezelski as "Ted Pretzel-ski" for some not-terribly funny reason).